Mr GEORGIOU (2:14 PM) —My question is addressed to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Would the minister inform the House how Australian workers have benefited from the system of enterprise bargaining? Are there any alternative views?

Mr ANDREWS (Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) —I thank the member for Kooyong for his question and, in response, say to him that the system of enterprise bargaining in Australia has led to more jobs, higher wages and greater productivity in this country. This is a system which is underpinned by the corporations power in the Constitution. Indeed, in the Work Choices package before the parliament the corporations power will be used to further that system, rather than have the old system that we had in the past based on a system of industrial disputes.

The corporations power was first used not by the coalition but by the Labor Party under the leadership of the then Prime Minister, Mr Keating. Indeed, in is second reading speech in 1993 the then Minister for Industrial Relations, Laurie Brereton, said this:

This was not a new idea for the Labor Party. Indeed, as far back as October 1972, in an address to the Metal Trades Industry Association, the then Prime Minister—the then Labor Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam—had also advocated the use of the corporations power for industrial relations in Australia. In the past, Mr Whitlam, Mr Keating and Mr Brereton were all in favour of the use of the corporations power because this enabled the creation of a system based on cooperation rather than a system based on the old Conciliation and Arbitration Act, which at its core had this bizarre proposition that, to resolve an industrial arrangement, you first had to create an interstate dispute in order to have an arbitration commissioner move in and then resolve that dispute. So the corporations power was strongly advocated by the Labor Party and its leadership in the past. What is the position of the Labor Party today? This was revealed on the Insiders program last Sunday when the Leader of the Opposition was interviewed.This is what he said when he was asked about this matter:

So we had the Leader of the Opposition say use of the corporations power is all wrong. He went on to say:

And this is what he finished up by saying:

Mr Kelvin Thomson interjecting—

The SPEAKER —Order! The member for Wills is warned!

Mr ANDREWS —So what we have here, whether he intended it or not, is a clear indication that the Leader of the Opposition wants to rip up the use of the corporations power, which was advocated by Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating and put in place by Laurie Brereton as industrial relations minister. What that means is this: the consequence of that is not just undoing the reforms that this government has put in place; it is undoing the reforms which the Leader of the Opposition voted for when he was a member of the Keating cabinet. That is what he is doing: he is saying I am going to rip up the reforms which I was partly responsible for in 1993 to bring about a more collective approach in Australia. He wants a system which is based on awards and conflict rather than a system based on cooperation. The consequence of this is not just a rip-up of legislation; it is a rip-off of ordinary Australian workers, because under both collective and individual agreements they earn more. That is what we will be telling the Australian people day in and day out.